


See Where We Fall

by MauveCat



Series: Family Snapshots [8]
Category: Endless Summer (Visual Novel)
Genre: Family Feels, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-29
Updated: 2020-05-29
Packaged: 2021-03-03 05:00:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,388
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24439345
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MauveCat/pseuds/MauveCat
Summary: Raj cooks and he thinks about things; Zahra and Craig try to follow along.
Relationships: Craig Hsiao/Zahra Namazi
Series: Family Snapshots [8]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1729411
Comments: 4
Kudos: 8





	See Where We Fall

“Ugh.” Zahra stopped in the act of pushing up the sleeves of her oversized purple bathrobe and she squinted in the bright light. “Who put that up there?”

“The sun?” Raj grinned but he didn't look up as he stirred a pitcher. “Interesting question. Do you want a theological, astrophysical or Aristotelian explanation?”

“I want my sunglasses. Move, scrublord. I wanna sit there.” She left the doorway and joined the others on the rooftop patio.

“Typical. You sleep through us dragging everything upstairs and you finally show up and what's the first thing you do? Steal my chair. We're comfortable, but okay. C'mon, Buddy.” Craig moved to another chair and the small brown and white dog followed him and laid down on his feet again, gazing up in adoration.

“Fine. I'm grateful. See?” Zahra leaned down and kissed Craig. “Satisfied?”

“Lots.” He grinned up at her.

As she sat down with her back to the sun, Zahra looked at the table. “Our fridge was pretty much empty the last time I looked. Where did all this come from?”

“Well, Z, you probably haven't noticed in the three years we've lived here, but there's a twenty-four hour grocery store one block away from us.” Craig put a hand alongside his mouth and stage-whispered, “ _They have food there._ ”

“And if you give them money, you can take it home with you,” Raj added helpfully.

“I left a perfectly good bed and came all the way up here, and what do I get? Smartass remarks.” Zahra looked under the table at the dog. “What are you doing over there? Us girls gotta stick together.” Buddy tilted her shaggy head and stayed where she was. “I'll remember this when it's treat time.” The dog immediately came over and put her paws on Zahra's leg. “What? What did I say?”

“The T-word. Here.” Raj snapped his fingers and Buddy padded over and sat down obediently. “What's the secret word?” The dog whuffed and Raj gave her a tiny cube of cheese.

“I think your dog is the politest person here,” Craig said.

“That's a pretty low bar. Did you ever get the results back from the doggy DNA test kit I sent you?”

Raj nodded at Zahra. “Sure did. She's mainly cocker spaniel and beagle. I would've guessed more of a terrier with that face, but genetics does weird things.”

“Whatever she is, she's the goodest girl.” Realizing that there would be no more cheese, Buddy went back to Craig and he began rubbing her ears. “Man, I can't believe you found a dog this great just hanging around a street market.”

“Yeah. I had to scramble to get documents so I could fly her out of the country – worth it, though. The episodes I shot in Paris turned out okay, but I still think she's probably the best thing to come out of France in the past twenty years.” Raj looked at Zahra. “I forgot to ask you last night. Have you found a new bass player yet?”

Shaking her head, Zahra snagged a muffin and began smearing butter on it. “Not yet. We're setting up auditions next week, though, and I've got some clips to check out. You want to listen to them with us before you and the hound head out to Tucson?”

“Sure. Did you ever hear why the old one just quit on you?”

Around a mouthful of crumbs, Zahra said, “Yep. She said she had to go to a retreat up in Maine because we gummed up her chakras or something.” She gulped some coffee, then went on. “I keep telling people that it's not fair to stereotype bassists as being flaky, but... well, then there's Dora. I could have dealt with her quitting, but an hour before a gig? Not cool. If she ever tries to get back in the band, she's a dead woman.”

“Naw, you don't wanna do that. It's really hard to get rid of bodies,” Craig said as he helped himself to more scrambled eggs. “You need a pretty hot fire to burn them up completely, for one thing, 'cause of all the water inside a dead person. Even if you manage it, all kinds of evidence survives in spite of fire. You could chop them up – ” He gave a visual demonstration with his fork. “ – And scatter the pieces but then you're going to leave cut marks, and that makes it easier to trace. And you wouldn't think so but sometimes killers get tracked down because they dumped the body parts in different places – more dump sites means more chances to get caught. Acid is really messy and unreliable so you shouldn't bother with that. And if you don't take care of a corpse quick – man, they leak _everywhere_.”

Raj blinked and stopped pouring his mimosa just in time. He looked at Zahra. “Everything okay with you guys?”

She snorted into her coffee. “I wonder sometimes.”

Craig began dribbling sriracha over his eggs. “It's for a new game I'm working on,” he said cheerfully. “Kind of a zombie CSI thing – some of the side quests are about solving murders and I wanna get the details right when I set up clues. Jake's sister Rebecca put me in touch with the forensics team at her department. It's really interesting.”

Zahra looked at him fondly. “He says he isn't shooting for a Developer of the Year award but I know better.”

Craig grinned back. “That's not the goal, but I wouldn't turn it down. The trophy's really cool.”

Grabbing a mimosa for herself, Zahra took a sip. “Oh, man, that's good. But Raj, I hope you know that we don't expect you to cook for us every time we get together, right?”

Raj spooned some fruit compote onto his plate. “Getting paid for cooking is great. Still doesn't compare to cooking for people I love,” he said with a smile.

Craig sighed and leaned back. “Can't believe everything is working out for all of us. I mean, after the crap we went through, it's amazing that we all ended up where we are. You think it's because we were always meant to come off of La Huerta like this?”

Picking up his fork, Raj said, “Maybe, maybe not. Sometimes I think we're all where we are because of where we were when Taylor... left. It's possible that everything could have ended a lot differently for all of us.”

Zahra and Craig looked at each other uncertainly. After a moment, he said, “I don't get it.”

“Well....” Raj put his fork down again. “I've been thinking about the whole time loop thing a lot lately. We did the same thing over and over so many times that it's practically impossible that it was _exactly_ the same thing every time. There are all kinds of different outcomes that might have happened, and probably did. We all could have ended up somewhere else. Like a kind of... I don't know, Catalyst Yahtzee. Shake us up, see where we fall.”

“You think maybe you did a little too much wake and bake this morning?” But Zahra frowned as she thought it over. “So you're saying that – and let's assume that we all survived because it's a nice day and I don't wanna depress myself – all of us might have ended up doing something else, or with someone else? That sounds friendly.”

“Except for me, because I don't think I'd necessarily be into sex in any time loop,” Raj said easily. “But in theory, yeah. Taylor said the loop restarted almost three thousand times. Just look at the laws of probability, dudes. If you flip one coin … let's say one thousand times, you'll get five hundred heads and five hundred tails... if you do that a few times, the final result may be just a couple off either way but it'll still average out to fifty-fifty. You flip two coins, though, and it gets more complicated. And if you flip a dozen coins three thousand times? That's when you get probabilities with all kinds of zeroes. Anything could happen and it probably did at some point, so, yeah. It's possible that some of you could've come off the island with other partners.”

“I... don't know how I feel about that,” Craig said. “Because I like him and all but Al just doesn't do it for me.”

“I don't think he's all that into you, either.” Raj said. He pushed a dish over to the others. “Try this and let me know what you think – I'm fine-tuning my upma recipe. Lemon and lime wedges are over there, so tell me which one goes better. Anyway. It's possible that because we did everything over and over again, when we hit the last go-round at least some of us had a... well, let's call it a shortcut when it came to relationships.”

Zahra looked up from her plate. “One, is this oatmeal? Because I don't usually like oatmeal but this is okay. Two, are you saying that the only reason me and the doofus here – ”

“Hey. I can hear you.”

“Me and the hot sexy doofus here –”

“Better.”

“ – The only reason we got together is because we did it so often that we didn't have any choice?”

Raj made a seesawing gesture. “There's always a choice, of course. Probability isn't inevitability. But you two had plenty of chances to work through your issues so maybe when the loop reset that last time, you were finally ready to move past them.”

Zahra looked up from the muffin crumbs she was scraping into a pile. “Okay. New thought. Does that mean it's just... us? You're the one babbling about probability, Raj.” He nodded, not offended in the least. “No matter what combination we end up in, it's weird that we all seem to either be alone, or with someone who was on the island with us. What are the odds of that happening?”

“Really, really low, and that's something else I've been turning over in my head. I... don't think it's necessarily connected to anything specific to La Huerta. But you can't deny that it was a hell of a bonding experience and there's so much that we can't talk about with outsiders.” Raj fell silent for a moment. “The fact that I just called the rest of the planet 'outsiders' is probably significant. It'd be a huge barrier to any relationship.”

Craig frowned unhappily and pushed his food around. “You guys heard that Sean broke up with that lawyer he was dating?” The others nodded. “He doesn't want to talk about it yet but it happened after Jake and Quinn came to see him in the Pro Bowl game, and Sean... well, Ramona got really hurt when Sean saw the two of them every night but he didn't invite her to spend much time with all of them. So if a relationship with anyone besides another Catalyst won't work, is that the main reason Sean and Meech aren't together? Because they didn't work through everything and if they do, then – ?”

“Maybe. Maybe they had a little more work left to do and if they do that, they still might get together. Or maybe not. Maybe they were only supposed to be friends all along. No way to know at this point.”

“Well, maybe that'll give Sean and Jake a chance to work through _their_ issues.” When the others stared at her, Zahra shrugged. “I'm just saying. What, you guys didn't think there was something behind all that mano-a-mano shit?”

“Ooookay. Not touching that one.” Raj pulled over a footstool. He barely got one foot in place before Buddy jumped up and laid down, tail thumping peacefully. Leaving his other foot on the ground, Raj said, “I'm not saying that we all ended up where we are because of determinism. There's still a lot that simply comes down to chance – I mean, free will is what happens when pure dumb luck bumps heads with fate. And Emerson said that you decide where your destiny is, so in a way – ”

“Hey.” Craig pointed back and forth between himself and Zahra. “I hate to interrupt but our eyes are starting to glaze over.”

“Sorry. Didn't mean to get lost in the weeds. What I started off trying to say is that it's pretty likely that, say, Grace and Aleister got together in most of the timelines, not just the one we finished up in – there's too much pulling them together. Same with Diego and Varyyn. Taylor and Estela too,” he finished mournfully. “Man, I miss Taylor.”

“Yeah.” Zahra lifted her glass. “Taylor.” The others both tapped their glasses against hers. After they all drank, she went on. “If we could change one thing, I'd have her still with us.” Both Craig and Raj pretended they didn't notice the tears in her eyes. “But if different things happened in different loops, how do we know which version is the real one?”

“Could be they all are. The lives we're living now feel real and obvious because... well, because that's the reality we're in. But who knows? Maybe if the same thing happened often enough, it created a pathway – like when a trail through the woods gets more defined every time it's used. But that doesn't mean it's impossible to leave that path. If things shook out differently in one of the loops, maybe that created its own reality. Some theorists believe that time is entirely an illusion that the human brain creates to make sense out of chaos, so for all we know, the time loops were a manifestation of that and if there's a way to harness whatever force was behind them, we could either create time loops of our own, or sidestep into some of those other realities.”

“Nope. We're not going there. We don't get do-overs in the real world. Now you're getting into some serious multiverse shit, Raj.” Zahra scowled. “You're saying there's a timeline where Taylor stayed with us, or one where Rourke won, or – or _anything_ could have happened?”

Craig looked at Raj sympathetically. “There's a lot going on in your head. Do you think it means you smoke too much?”

Raj sighed and looked at the bright blue sky. “Sometimes I think it might mean I don't smoke nearly enough.”

**Author's Note:**

> I've thought a lot about this and I'm pretty confident that Raj is asexual, but I always get a bit tetchy when asexuals are written as being emotionally stunted or unable to understand why people fall in love. He understands it perfectly well and he's got a huge warm heart, it's just that his brain is wired in a different way when it comes to romance and sex, and he's 100% okay with that.
> 
> And for those of you playing along at home: I'm just about settled about the underlying hows and whys of bringing Taylor/Vaanu back around, and now I'm sorting out the mechanics.
> 
> (I'm not actually aware of any zombie CSI games. If anyone has heard of one, let me know - I'd probably play the hell out of it.)


End file.
